Last stop?

Betty Merten gets a ride from Madison Metro’s paratransit service to a fitness class.

While waiting in her wheelchair for a paratransit pick-up this month, 60-year-old Betty Merten reflects on how difficult it was in the late 1970s to go anywhere before Madison Metro upped the city’s paratransit game.

Back then, there was no city-operated paratransit service for those with physical and cognitive disabilities. There was just Hank’s, a private outfit that used a priority-based system in which riders’ destinations were scored and ranked by importance.

“I might have plans to meet a girlfriend for coffee, but if someone else had a doctor’s appointment at the same time, they were given higher priority,” says the Fond du Lac native, who was born with spina bifida and is unable to walk. “There was no guarantee your ride would show up.”

When Madison Metro began providing service in the early 1980s, it quickly set a higher standard in the largely unregulated paratransit market. Safe, reliable and affordable, it conferred a level of freedom unimaginable to Merten when she was growing up.

But nearly 30 years later, she is fighting to keep her freedom from being sacrificed to the city’s bottom line.

Mayor Paul Soglin’s plan to retire Metro’s paratransit bus fleet, and move 15 full-time drivers back to mainline routes, coincides with a $3.9 million reduction in federal paratransit funding. The deficit stems from the forced implementation of Wisconsin’s Family Care program in Dane County. As a result, Metro will no longer have access to the federal Medicaid funds that came through Dane County and helped pay for Metro’s roughly $9 million paratransit system.

“Wisconsin will begin contracting with Family Care instead of Dane County,” says Bill Hanna, fiscal administrator with Human Services. Those Medicaid dollars will now go to private contractors to provide the service and will cost $4 a ride, a 75-cent increase. The change would also end door-to-door service, and provide only curb-to-curb, unless special arrangements are made.

The mayor and Metro managers claim their hands are tied, but those who rely on the service, and even its drivers, have made it clear they won’t be thrown under the bus without a fight.

“My take,” Merten says, “is that people in Metro’s paratransit office have wanted to get rid of the service for many, many years, and they’ve done their level best to make it so. They’ve convinced the city council to make it go private, and are blaming it on the state.”

No one denies that $3.9 million is a lot of money, but there is a sense among riders and drivers the issue boils down to a lack of political will, perhaps even willful indifference. Some suspect there’s more than what is being disclosed.

“Five months ago, we were talking about purchasing new paratransit buses,” says one Metro paratransit driver, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Four months ago, the rumors started.” Isthmus agreed to withhold Metro drivers’ names due to concerns about reprisals for talking to the media.

In early June, agency heads received Soglin’s 2018 budget instructions, in which the mayor took a swipe at Republican lawmakers for standing in the way of his “comprehensive vision to better connect individuals with jobs through bus rapid transit.”

The state has blocked the formation of a “regional transit entity,” which Soglin notes would help “to leverage federal support to build this system.”

Agency heads were also told, “Your budget requests should also be developed with equity in mind.” Soglin did not mention Metro’s impending funding shortfall due to Family Care.

In the weeks before the instructions were sent, the state Department of Health Services rejected two county requests for amendments to the state’s contract with the federal government.

“We followed up a couple of times to see if they were interested in doing something creative, but they wanted to leave it the way it is,” Hanna says. “What was a little strange to me was, if the state had amended [the contract for] the transportation money, it wouldn’t have cost the state anything more.”

On July 7, a Metro committee released a six-page report that included the recommendations Soglin now proposes to implement. Mick Rusch, Metro spokesperson, says the recommendations are the best of the options discussed.

Metro’s paratransit drivers were informed in early October that they’d be returning to mainline routes. Several paratransit drivers say the job requires special skills and they’re sad they will no longer be serving people that need them.

Metro’s seniority system ensures a driver has upwards of 10 years of driving experience before they’re even eligible to drive paratransit.

“By the time we became paratransit drivers only the people who wanted to do it and feel comfortable doing it are doing it,” a driver explains. “As a paratransit driver, we have to insert ourselves into people’s lives, so we quickly become advocates.”

Among the other service changes is the elimination of bus tickets, which some say places vulnerable riders at-risk since drivers may need to access a rider’s purse or wallet because the rider is unable to do so.

“Some people can hand you a ticket, but they can’t count out $3.25,” another driver explains. “Others can’t manage their money. You give them $4 and they’ll buy a cheeseburger and have no money for a ride. An attendant then has to come out and pay. More riders will get lost. It’s just going to be a big mess.”

City and county officials say they’re trying to make the best of a bad situation. Hanna is focusing on making the county’s transition to Family Care as smooth as possible for residents.

Rusch says Metro is working with the county to iron out as many wrinkles before Family Care rolls out in February. “They are working closely with us… to best ensure our riders as easy a transition as possible to this new way of doing things.”

Despite the bleak forecast, the changes are not final, Rusch says. The Transit and Parking Commission was scheduled to begin discussion of the plan one piece at a time on Nov. 8, with talks continuing through January.

On the other hand, Rusch says its fleet of buses is beyond what the Federal Transit Administration defines as their useful life. Funds aren’t available to replace them.

Care Wisconsin and My Choice Family Care are scheduled to begin offering paratransit services early next year through the Family Care program, Hanna says.

Metro hasn’t hammered out a timeline for phasing out its service and it’s unclear whether it will contract with the two MGOs chosen for Dane County if the Common Council approves ending its paratransit service. The uncertainty worries many riders, like Richard Berkholtz, a visually impaired man who says he needs assistance boarding the bus.

“It’s something I don’t want to lose,” he says, referring to the elimination of door-to-door service, among other proposed cuts.

Berkholtz isn’t the only one concerned about a loss of personalized service. “Metro has very stringent rules,” Merten says. “Their drivers are held to a very high standard. To be a paratransit driver, you have to be a special kind of person. The average person can’t do this job.”

The change may also diminish Madison’s standing in the world. “Madison Metro paratransit has been a place for other cities and other countries to come… see how it’s done,” says Merten. “Now the city says, ‘We’re not going to do it this way; we’re only going to do the minimum required by law.’”

Paratransit rider Katherine Ambler says she feels let down by the mayor and has found the process disappointing.

“This is Madison for crying out loud,” says the 50-year-old who uses a wheelchair. “We’re supposed to be better than this.”